Time and again, Senator Alan Peter Cayetano shows he doesn’t take defeats lightly and quietly.

On Wednesday, June 3, he was removed as Senate president in a coup that resulted in a new leadership already recognized by Malacañang and the House of Representatives. Yet Cayetano is challenging the legitimacy of the proceeding that apparently ousted him.

The way Cayetano reacted isn’t new, because this is also not the first time he lost control over a chamber of Congress.

In 2020, Cayetano lost the House speakership to Lord Allan Velasco, in a rather unconventional coup at the time.

Velasco — whom Cayetano had a term-sharing deal with — already had the numbers to replace his predecessor who reneged on their agreement, but Cayetano padlocked the Batasan plenary to prevent Velasco from replacing him.

This did not deter Velasco, whose allies held a session inside a sports club to install him as their new speaker.

Cayetano, instead of admitting he no longer had the numbers, questioned the proceedings, and argued that his rivals’ math was wrong.

“205 lawmakers signed with me, okay? So if they are 186, the problem is that there are around 80 flying voters who voted twice. If you voted twice, under the rule, your vote is canceled out. But that’s not the rule. The rule is the voting has to be in the session hall,” Cayetano said at the time.

It took him another day to acknowledge that he had lost the speakership, but framed it as him tendering his irrevocable resignation.

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Jump to present day, and Cayetano turns to arithmetic to still project control over the Senate.

This latest apparent coup against him was again unconventional, but that was also partly because he had refused to convene the Senate for two consecutive days.

On the third day, the 11-person minority bloc, with the help of majority bloc defector Chiz Escudero, decided to move all leadership posts vacant. They insisted that they had the quorum to do so, citing a Supreme Court ruling in the 1940s that effectively allowed 12 out 22 senators to convene at the time.

In true Cayetano fashion, the embattled lawmaker went on Facebook to insist that his political rivals didn’t have the numbers.

“The Senate can conduct business with a majority of all its members. A majority of 24 is 13,” Cayetano said. “They just can’t elect a new Senate president because there’s no precedent for it. If they have 13 votes, I’ll even vote with them. I’ll make it easier for them and give it to them quickly. They don’t have 13.”

Perhaps there are now three certainties in life: death, taxes, and Cayetano being a sore loser.

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– Rappler.com